"You shall not pass!" booms Gandalf the Grey as mobile Safari visitors arrive at the New York Post web site this weekend. Sorry, correction: That's how it played out in my head. Reality is more mundane and mostly annoying.

Instead of a web site, mobile Safari visitors are greeted with a landing page that displays an iPad and instructions related to downloading the NYP's App Store app. As AppleInsider notes, this new page replaces a "welcome" ad promoting the app that would eventually allow visitors to proceed to the full web site experience.

To access that full experience now you'll have to plunk down $6.99/month, $39.99 for six months, or $79.99 for the full year.

Stinks for mobile Safari users, and the process is indicative of the ways in which newspapers will try and squeeze money out of certain subsets of Internet denizens, but a rag has to get paid, right?

In related news, blogger Dave Winer says the practice is "breaking the web" and that Apple is probably pretty pissed about the whole ordeal. He suggests they grant users the ability to "hide" what kind of device they're surfing the web with so that desperate for subscriptions because they gave away free content for so many years print newspapers can't pull this anymore. [AppleInsider]